Sunday, September 20, 2009

(500) DAYS OF SUMMER is a hipster movie in love with its own kookiness. It thinks it’s being truthful about modern dating, and daring in its fantasy sequences. But what we really have is a romantic drama about a vapid, irritating woman and her schmuck of a boyfriend. The schmuck is played by Jospeh Gordon Levitt, taking a break from his typically grittier fare with an outing in G I JOE earlier this summer, and now this confection. He plays a greeting card writer and geek, who falls for the cute office girl. He wants a relationship – indeed he thinks he’s in one already. She refuses to “put labels on it”. You could interpret Zooey Deschanel’s character as emotionally scarred and, therefore, afraid of commitment, but then, right after dumping the schmuck, Summer marries another guy. The schmuck is understandably dismayed, as was I. It also doesn’t help that we don’t meet the guy who is so she’s suddenly so sure about it. Because of this rather opaque writing, the girl’s motives are unclear and her behavior hard to understand. The result is that, despite the innate charm of Zooey Deschanel, Summer came across as basically a bitch, and I just wasn’t interested in her, or in any man content to be screwed over by her. Harsh, but there it is.

(500) DAYS OF SUMMER played Sundance 2009 and opened earlier this year in the US and Canada. It is currently on release in the UK, Australia and Italy. It opens next week in the Netherlands and on October 1st in France, New Zealand and Taiwan. It opens on October 8th in the Czech Republic, Singapore and Turkey. It opens on October 22nd in Germany, Russia and Spain, and on October 30th in Finland and Norway. It opens in November in Belgium, Croatia, Brazil, Poland and Argentina. It opens in December in Slovenia and Estonia and on January 9th in Japan.